Clik wants to control your screens. This new app by Clik Interactive is impressive—even for the technologically jaded. In practical terms, the concept is pretty simple, and the idea, nothing new. We have these smartphones that are no longer just phones. They are virtual multiplexes. The movie references is on purpose, but it also speaks to the combing of signals, as the term is used in engineering.

Clik: Reinventing the Remote

Those of you old enough to remember the first remote controllers can chuckle at the memory of those two-button boxes that controlled the volume and channel knobs on your old TV set. As a child, it was mesmerizing to see the little channel knob on the big Telefunken set turn magically as you hit the button on the remote.

Well, the makers of Clik are bringing back some of that magic to your smartphones. The Clik app can be downloaded for free both at the App Store and Android Market. Once you have downloaded the app, simply click it and follow the steps.

You will be immediately prompted to go to www.clikthis.com. There, one of these new scan code you have been seeing everywhere will be generated, which uniquely identifies your screen. Simply line up the blue dot on the screen and the one that appears in the middle of the app’s field of view and the devices (your smartphone and your computer or browse-capable TV) will be automatically synced up.

Presently, Clik uses Youtube content, so you will only be able to watch videos that you normally would watch by going directly to the YouTube site. The only difference is that you can now control the videos with your smartphone.

To add a little extra measure of cool, your friends can also scan the code with their smartphones so that you can all take turns choosing videos at your next get together. No longer do you have to fight over the chair in front of the computer. Just pick up your smartphone and start typing.

YouTube and More

The fact that you can only watch YouTube content is for sure a limitation. But the idea is that other providers of content will use the Clik platform to share videos. So says one of the members of the Clik team in a promotional video for the app. Developers of content can email Click directly to use their API beta toolkit to develop on top of the Clik platform.

Now, of course, there is a problem with this. If the consumer is bypassing YouTube or any other content provider (like Vimeo, Hulu, etc.) by going to Clik, why would they ever go back to these sites? Clearly some kind of deal would have to be in place to accommodate that kind of potential loss in ad revenue.

Conceivably, if Clik were to generate the kind of viewership that YouTube now enjoys (and why not since they are using YouTube content?), they could become a provider of original content. But this does not seem to be in any near-future plans for the company.

Clik is not the only product of its kind. Flingo and WiDi technology already play with this idea of multi-device interface. Whether or not Clik becomes just another cool app that eventually gets lost in the app maze will depend on the kind of dynamic content it provides. The technology is there. What is missing, for now, is the substance that gives that technology life.